Background Help

[tylerr82]

I am new to web design and I am still trying to work a few things out. One of those being background. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/ The link is to SI. If you notice all of the content is in the middle and there is a grey background. How do you do that? Would you use CSS to set that for all of your pages? If it is an image what type would it be?

[darknuke]

Did you mean the cross hatch design ? If so they set the body background using css to an image an repeated it. The content in the middle is just placed in divs and aligned in the center.

Heres the actually CSS code they used for the background:

BODY {
    background: url("http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/.element/img/4.1/global/background_tile.gif") repeat-x scroll left top #CCCCCC;
    font: 11px verdana,geneva,sans-serif;
} 

[tylerr82]

Thank You. That was exactly the explanation I was looking for.